For many the scenario was either starvation or moving overseas. The Irish population has still not fully recovered from the Great Famine, and today on the whole island (Republic and Northern Ireland) there is 7 million people. The self-serving policies of Ireland's powerful neighbour, Britain, made worse the effects of the famine, in which the Irish public was overly reliant on a single food source, the potato, whose crops in Ireland were failing in the mid-19th century. This was because of an airborne fungus-like microorganism that had originated in Latin America, and which was transported in vessels over the Atlantic to Europe (2). London could have reduced some of the suffering by importing food products to Ireland, but chose to act in a different manner.